Ever on the lookout for a distressed damsel we flick our headlamps on, scan beams over rocks and pines. Shine them over the drop-off below us. Nothing.

“If you’re human please respond,” the voice wails.

“Hey!” I yell. “We’re human!”

“#@%@$@#%!!!!” She screams. “I thought you were a #&^#@$#* mountain lion!”

How could anyone confuse our heavy footed progress with a lion’s soft stalking?

“Mountain lions don’t make noise,” I yell back. Probably not very comforting to whoever she is. Wherever she is. Out there. Somewhere. No response. Good. A rescue would have screwed things up.

Turning the headlamps off T.B and I proceed onward and upward. A fat slice of silver moon illuminates the trail. Pikes Peak looms hard against the star lit sky. Getting to the top of that big thing — that’s the goal.

“Ever been up Pikes Peak?” my friend Max asked me. “That’s a butt kicker.” Max is a professional guide. I respect his opinion. In a month he and I will be in Tanzania climbing Kilimanjaro. Kilimanjaro is why I’ve been training these past few weeks on the local Fourteener’s. Shavano. Bierstadt. Evans. Now Pikes.

Travel and OutWest editor Kyle Wagner grew up in Pittsburgh and lived in Lake County, Ill., and Naples, Fla., before moving to Denver in 1993, where she reviewed restaurants for Westword before moving to The Denver Post in 2002. She considers the best days to be those that involve her teenage daughters and doing something outside, preferably mountain biking or whitewater rafting.

Dean Krakel is a photo editor (primarily sports) at The Denver Post. A native of Wyoming, he has authored three books, "Season of the Elk," "Downriver" and "Krakel's West." An avid kayaker, rafter, mountain biker, trail runner, telemark skier and backpacker, Dean's outdoor adventures have taken him around the world.

Douglas Brown was raised about 30 miles west of Philadelphia in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he spent a lot of time running around in the woods and fields (where he hunted and explored), and in the ocean (where he surfed and stared at the horizon). Now he lives in Boulder and spends as much time hiking, running, skiing and boarding the High Country (and the Boulder foothills) as possible.

Ricardo Baca is the entertainment editor and pop music critic at The Denver Post, as well as the founder and executive editor of Reverb and the co-founder of The UMS. Happy days often involve at least one of these: whitewater rafting, snowshoeing, vintage Vespas, writing, camping, live music, road trips, snowboarding or four-wheeling.